Mario Tronti is one of the founder of the theory of operaismo. One of the founder of the journal "Quaderni Rossi" with Raniero Panzieri, he left with other intellectuals the editorial group in 1963 to found the new journal "classe operaia" ("working class"). The main theorical differences that brought to the breakaway, regarded the interpretation of the working class behaviours. According to Tronti the refusal of work was to be considered as the main expression of the working class autonomy as the political strategy pre-exist in the spontaneous behaviours of the working class. The function of the party was to understand, express and organize it.

In the first phase, Tronti focused on the analysis of the spontaneous beahviours of the mass-worker and underlined the importance of the particular interests rather than of the universal values of the working class, celebrating subjectivity, irrationality and difference as the basis of the autonomy of the working class.
After the defeat of the workers mobilization in the sixities, Tronti moved to a reflexive phase that led him to re-think the role of the Italian Communist Party, that he had never officially left. His work moved than from the theory of the autonomy of the working class to that of the “autonomy of the political” to interpret as a renovation of the political class of the Italian Communist Party. In this period Tronti dedicated himself to teaching, reconciled with Italian Communist Party led by Enrico Berlinguer and was re-established as a member of the party. He continues to take part in the poltical life of the country and has been elected as a senator within the lists of the Democratic Party.